Budapest Exit

Faced with fascism, communism, and the 1956 Revolution, Csaba Teglas responded with ingenuity and hope. In ""Budapest Exit"", he tells the story of his twenty-year quest for freedom. Teglas rummaged the scrap heap of World War II for anything he could sell to get food money for his family. The income from selling bits of rubber and ball bearings was often the family's only sustenance. Teglas and his family and friends lived in constant fear; some were even subjected to communist jails and torture chambers. Teglas protested, sometimes quietly, sometimes more vocally, against the Soviet and communist presence in Hungary. During the 1956 revolution, he became more involved in the opposition. When it became clear that the revolutionaries would not succeed, he knew he had to leave. Teglas recounts his dramatic escape through the heavily guarded Iron Curtain and his subsequent journey to North America, where life as an immigrant presented new challenges. This memoir is Csaba Teglas' personal story of his youth, told from the point of view of a man with sons of his own. He found in America the freedom for which he had been searching, but he has raised his American sons to remain proud of their Hungarian heritage.